Copy the file in second column when the first column match

I would like to copy the files listed in the 2nd column of a text file to directory dir1, if the 1st column is "include" or "Include". my script just prints out all lines without copying the files.

main_file

lines here
another line
Include 'file1'
include 'file2'
endoffile

desired output
file1 & file2 copied in the dir1 directory

my script

awk 'tolower($1)=="include"{cp $2 dir1}' main_file

To perform an OS operation (eg, cp) from within awk you'll want to look at the system() function, eg:

awk -F"'" 'tolower($1) ~ /^include / {system("cp \"" $2 "\" dir1")}' main_file

Since the objective here is to perform an OS-level file copy it may be more straightforward to do this in bash ...

Adding a file with spaces in the name and creating the files/dir:

$ cat main_file
lines here
another line
Include 'file1'
include 'file2'
include 'file3 with spaces'
endoffile

$ touch file1 file2 'file3 with spaces'
$ mkdir dir1

One idea:

while IFS="'" read -r _ fname _
do
    cp "$fname" dir1
done < <(grep -i '^include ' main_file)

Before running either set of code (awk, bash):

$ ls -l dir1
                     # no output => nothing in directory

After running either set of code (awk, bash):

$ ls -l dir1
-rw-rw----+ 1 username None 30 Jun 29 10:50  file1
-rw-rw----+ 1 username None 90 Jun 29 10:50  file2
-rw-rw----+ 1 username None  0 Jun 29 10:50 'file3 with spaces'

NOTE: both solutions (awk, bash) assume the file names are always wrapped in single quotes and the file names do not include any single quotes

I want to explain what your code

awk 'tolower($1)=="include"{cp $2 dir1}' main_file

is actually doing

tolower($1)=="include" does case-insensitive comparison, this bit more sensitive that 1st column is "include" or "Include". (which would be expressed as $1=="include"||$1=="Include") as it also holds for INCLUDE, InClUdE and so on, but if these do not appear or should be treated same way will be ok.

{cp $2 dir1} does string concatenation, as cp and dir1 were not defined, GNU AWK assumes that they are empty strings. As you did not instruct GNU AWK what to do with effect of concatenation nothing is printed (at least in GNU Awk 5.1.0, which I used for testing).

As far as I know GNU AWK has not function for copying files, however you might use GNU AWK to prepare set of instructions for bash following way

awk 'tolower($1)=="include"{print "cp " $2 " dir1"}' main_file | bash

Keep in mind that such solution is prone to breakage, as it did not care about dir1 existence and might malfunction if there is ' inside name of file, so if possible consider using language which sports features for dealing with copying files.

$ cat main_file 
lines here
another line
Include 'file1'
include 'file2'
include 'file3 with spaces'
endoffile

$ grep -i "^include " main_file | xargs -n2 sh -c '[ -f "$1" ] && cp "$1" dir1/'

$ ls dir1
file1   file2  'file3 with spaces'